Hi! For now Steampunk Idle Spinner has been downloaded more than 250 000 times, and 3300 people have joined our facebook group! The game has 3 worlds: Workshop, Clockwork City and Floating Islands, which contain around 40 various steampunk machines, vehicles and contraptions.

Since recently I'm thinking of how will the new world look like. I'm ready to announce that this is going to be Assembly line world, where the coins will be produced, transported and upgraded. I've made several sketches which represent the expected gameplay mechanics. What do you think of it?

Any critique, suggestions, questions is appreciated!

About the expected timeframe. I have a very strict deadline: 31st Dec, when the games are accepted to Google Play contest and IMGA contest. I'm putting all my effort to make the world playable by then. Perhaps (as the contest jury first look at the visuals and then - to gameplay), I'll make a separate build with Assembly line only, and will submit and to the contest and show to you.

Also I want to test several new gameplay concepts in this world, which will then migrate to the big game.
1. Permanent upgrades. A much-requested feature, which will let the players spend narrativium to permanently boost some in-game parameters, like tap bonus, engines productivity, details discount, start money.
2. Player ranks. You will start as "Apprentice Mechanic", and then, depending on how big your steampunk contraption is, you'll proceed to "Engineer" or even "Sky Lord". Ranks will unlock more game features.
3. More real physics.Taking into account torque, friction, momentum, when calculating energy transfer through the chains of connected cogwheels.
4. More production chains: besides the streamline of coins, produced by one machine and gradually upgraded by the other machines in the assembly line, the same will be for machines fuel and substances, which increase the machine's production.
5. Enigma machine. Once a while it will produce a code, and if you break it, you'll get a significant reward, which is much bigger than for catching the gremlin.
6. Music machine. Sound is also a much-requested game feature. But I want to to just add sound, but to let the player build a music machine: specify tempo, notes, rhythm.
7. Cloud services: finally it's time to save the player's progress in the cloud and let the players compare their results in the leaderboards.
8. Besides I want to try to keep the previous world after the player exits it from the portal, and then transfer resources between the worlds.

All these additions will alter the game objects' structure and formats, so, some time is needed before making them public. But I will inform you of the gamedev progress and will update the current versions with new features and optimizations.

In the Workshop and Clockwork cities of my Steampunk Idle Spinner game there were two ways of generating income: machine and balloons. In the Workshop world you could pump the balloons which would bring you coins from the void, and in the Clockwork city the Tax collectors on zeppelins attended every house and tavern and brought you money.

The floating Islands world needed additional way of income as well. The members of our facebook group suggested that it's time to add some shooting to the game mechanics. I was planning to base a separate world, like "Airship pirates", on the mechanics which involves buying cannons, upgrading them, shooting an looting enemy convoys, but I thought that Floating Islands world is a good place to add cannons, too.

So, here's how you are going to get money from balloons there:

You will buy a direction sign which will lead the gold-filled flying galleons to your air city. Then you can place 2 types of weapons (cannons and Tesla guns on your islands) on the islands along the galleons' path. You can empower these weapons by attaching engines to them or by applying upgrades.

Weapon upgrades upgrade both damage and range, but Tesla guns gain additional range growth, and cannons gain additional damage growth. When you see that your weapon is powerful enough to deal with incoming galleons easily you can upgrade the entry point to get a tougher targets and get more reward for downing them.

As next phase of game development I see polishing, improving UI, adding informers, like "coins per second" and "current upgrade level". Also some refactoring is needed before adding new worlds. s for the worlds I have really big goals: I want to feature all the main settings from Steampunk literature and movies here, and seeing such a great support from the community I'm sure I'll complete these goals!